Day 81

When I woke up this morning, I checked Shelby's ears, as usual, and they looked awful. Not their normal red and itchy...but awful, like blistered hamburger. Poor baby. I took her to the vet.

She did pretty well as far as vet trips go. She was pretty well behaved until we got into the exam room where she decided to go dogatonic and play dead in hopes that the vet would ignore her (see picture below). For those who don't know, dogatonia is a condition that affects my dogs at times when they don't want to do what you are asking them to do, for example, Kahne gets dogatonia when wearing clothing. Flint gets it when told to go to his kennel. Shelby is apparently only dogatonic at the vet. Basically, they lay there and look at you out of the corner of their eye, believing that if they ignore you, you will go away...sound familiar, babe? We call it selective hearing or artillery ear when you do it. ;) Love you.

After leaving the vet office with three medications, a diagnosis of a skin infection most likely caused by allergies and an almost $200 bill, we went to petco to get dog food. Usually you are with me when we take Shelby with us to petco....today I got to wrangle both the cart and Shel, while trying to get a 30 pound bag of food in the cart, a 15 pound bag, pay for it all and get her back to the truck with the purchases.

When we get to the truck, I leave the cart at the back and go to the side door to put her in before unloading the cart. As I open the door, a raven (these things are as big as chickens and protected by law due to some native belief that upon death, they are reincarnated as one of these dumpster divers. Killing one results in a hefty fine...something to the effect of $20,000) decides it will stroll out from under the truck. The bird saw Shelby at about the same time that Shelby saw the bird. Due to the positioning of the raven between the dog and the truck, it couldn't fly, so it had to take the second best option...it ran. That's right...it ran.

This bird went bolting back under the truck for safety, falling on the ice not once, but twice, before it was sure Shelby didn't have it's tail feathers in her teeth. I haven't laughed so hard in months. Shelby looked up at me like, "What the hell was that, Mommy?"

After we made it home, Shelby took her medicine and it seems to be working. She's not scratching, but it's got her fairly knocked out. I'm just thankful her itching has subsided a bit.

I am headed to bed, but I'm sorry you couldn't be there to watch The Great Standoff today. It was pretty hilarious. I love you, babe, and miss you tons. See you in my dreams. Goodnight.